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Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Bill Rahn, a gym owner and lawyer, has announced as a Democratic candidate for state House from District 39, currently held by Republican state Rep. Mark Lowery of Maumelle.

Rahn, who owns the Snap Fitness Gym and is a licensed attorney, is a former program manager for the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation and the Foundation for the Mid-South. He's also been a director of legal services support for the Center for Arkansas Legal Services. From his release:

“I believe we can do more at the legislative level to improve the lives of all Arkansas families,” said Rahn. “We can improve our public schools and encourage economic development strategies that build a knowledge-based economy in central Arkansas. In addition, we must expand high quality pre-kindergarten programs so that our children can succeed in school and life. It takes real leadership to accomplish these goals and as State Representative I’ll help lead the charge to make our community an even better place to work and raise a family.”

Lowery won a sometimes personal challenge by 600 votes over Kelly Halstead in 2014. Rahn's news release made no mention of the matter, but since then, Lowery has run into some embarrassment as one of those whose names turned up on data hacked from the Ashley Madison website. Lowery said he thought it was just a dating website and didn't know it was promoted as a place to arrange extra-marital meetups. He said he was going through a divorce and messaged some people, but never met anyone through the site.

The latest numbers from the Department of Human Services show thousands more people did not meet the reporting requirement on work hours in July to meet Medicaid eligibility standards.

Vincent Tolliver, a candidate for Little Rock, mayor, has written legislators asking the Senate Education Committee to ask Education Commissioner Johnny Key to testify about problems encountered by parents on Monday, the first day of school in the state-run Little Rock School District.

On Friday, the Arkansas Legislative Council soundly rejected a bipartisan effort by two senators to to create a temporary legislative subcommittee to study race relations in the state.

It was not even 24 hours ago that Sophia Said, director of the Interfaith Center; City Director Kathy Webb and others decided to organize a protest today of Donald Trump's executive order that has left people from Muslim countries languishing in airports or unable to come to the US at all — people with visas, green cards,a post-doc graduate student en route to Harvard, Google employees abroad, families. I got the message today before noon; others didn't find out until it was going on. But however folks found out, they turned out in huge numbers, more than thousand men, women and children, on the grounds of the state Capitol to listen to speakers from all faiths and many countries.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson and 2nd District U.S. Rep. French Hill have refused to participate in TV debates scheduled in September.

Chintan Desai, the Democratic candidate for 1st District Congress, just dropped by with some news: An endorsement, a debate date and a celebrity visitor for his Republican incumbent opponent, Rep. Rick Crawford.

A lawsuit was filed today in the federal court for the District of Columbia challenging Arkansas's work requirement for many Medicaid recipients.

Rep. John Lewis, the civil rights legend, will visit Little Rock Sunday afternoon for a fund-raiser for state Rep. Clarke Tucker, the Democratic candidate for 2nd District Congress against Republican Rep. French Hill.